


First Sight

by elizabitchbennet



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, AU: Married at First Sight, F/M, married at first sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 05:47:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4210266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizabitchbennet/pseuds/elizabitchbennet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fresh from the wedding of her elder brother, Dana Scully finds herself signing up a social experiment where she’ll be married to a complete stranger. Shortly before his move from Boston to DC, Fox Mulder gets in on it too. A Married at First Sight inspired AU. MSR.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Sight

**Author's Note:**

> PSA: everything from here on in is going to be a bit messed up and anachronistic. Obviously Married at First Sight didn’t grace our television screens at the same time as the X-Files did, so for my own convenience I’m picking up Scully and Mulder circa 1993 and plopping them into modern day. I really don’t know what to say about this, it’s gonna be a little bit of a hot mess but hopefully it’ll be okay.  
> Also, for anyone who doesn't know what Married at First Sight is, it's pretty much what it says on the can. A couple is matched by a psychologist, sexologist, spiritualist, and sociologist and they meet for the first time at the alter. They then have six weeks to decide if they want to stay married or get a divorce.

Signing up for the show is almost an out-of-body experience.

Curled up in her chair with a face mask on and a glass of wine in hand, Dana Scully’s cursor seems to be moving of its own accord towards the application link. She’s almost surprised by the click of her trackpad and the flash on the laptop’s screen as it loads the new page.

She’s been home from Bill’s wedding for a matter of hours; her suitcase stands unpacked in the bedroom and despite multiple washings she can’t seem to get the sticky feeling of gel out of her hair. Perhaps it’s provoked by the post-flight exhaustion or the wine or plain, old-fashioned jealousy of her older brother’s happiness, but she finds herself filling out the form.

 **Name:** Dana Katherine Scully

 _This could be a mistake_ , warns a voice inside her head. _Who knows what sort of psycho you could get stuck with._

 **Date of Birth:** February 23, 1986

 _Or it could be great,_ whispers a different voice, one that sounds suspiciously like Melissa. _There’s no reward without risk._

And what a risk this is. To marry anyone is nerve wracking enough, but to walk down the aisle and see a completely unfamiliar face at the end is insane. She’s always imagined her wedding, like most little girls do, and never once had the idea of sliding a ring onto a stranger’s finger cropped up in her fantasies.

Dana takes a deep breath, and then another. She is a scientist, always researching and gathering data on the situations that she is presented with and she has prepared herself for this. She knows that arranged marriages, for that’s all this really is in the end of the day, still happen all over the world. She knows that they actually have a higher success rate than “love marriages” do. She knows that, when push comes to shove, she can always ask for a divorce if she needs to.

Slowly she begins to type again: filling in her height, weight, location, age, childhood history, educational experience, preferred personality of her partner, preferred looks of her partner…the list seems to go on forever. By the time she answers the last question (“How did you hear about casting?” to which she has to respond, with some reluctance, that she actually watched the last season of _Married at First Sight_ ) her wine glass is empty and the clock next to the TV reads 3:08 am.

Both hands come up to run through her hair while her cursor hovers over the ‘apply’ button. On one hand, this is a TV show. It’s a very public platform that will be showcasing a very private aspect of her life. The thought of it alone makes her feel slightly sick to her stomach. On the other hand, though, this is an experiment, and when has Dana Scully ever been able to say no to one of those? The science around it is interesting, if not quite as sound as it could be, and she has to admit to a certain level of selfish curiosity as to who, if anyone, they would pair her with.

She bites her lip and worries the flesh in between her teeth, staring at the screen in front of her. Finally she closes her eyes and presses down on the laptop’s trackpad. Breath wooshes out her nose when she sees the words “Thank you for applying to be on _Married at First Sight_! Please monitor your phone and email for follow up contact.”

Gently, she closes her laptop and rises to bring her wine glass in to the kitchen. Stopping in the bathroom on her way to bed, she scrubs the clay mask off her face, and is slightly surprised to see that she is smiling. A sort of giddiness is building in her chest, and she’s almost skipping as she walks to bed. Pulling back the covers, she settles in for the night.

When she falls asleep, the grin is still on her face.

* * *

Fox Mulder drags himself through the door of his Charlestown apartment, peeling his suit jacket away and toeing off his shoes in one swift motion. He tosses the jacket haphazardly onto a nearby chair as he makes his way to the couch. Collapsing face first onto it with a groan, he allows himself to relax for the first time that day.

Slowly, he lets the good news really sink in and his face splits open in an enormous grin. It’s done. He’s finally done it. Months of effort and elbow greasing and ass kissing have paid off in the form of a transfer out of the Boston branch of the FBI and straight into the heart of the Hoover building. After decades of abandonment, the FBI’s X-Files finally were in new hands: his, to be exact.

Exhausted but pleased with himself, he sits up slowly, grin still on his face. He reaches for his laptop and pops it open, immediately typing in pornhub.com in the open window’s address bar. _After all_ , he thinks to himself, _I deserve a little reward._

He’s browsing through the pages, looking for something special, when a faint ringing sound starts playing from his speakers. A small bubble appears in the upper right hand corner of the screen displaying the Skype logo and news that he’s receiving a call from The Lone Gunmen.

 _Shit_. He hadn’t thought to go offline before browsing around. He debates for a moment about whether or not to answer before clicking the notification with a long suffering sigh. Once the video link loads up, he gives a halfhearted wave.

“Hey guys.” The three Gunmen sit mostly in frame in a dark room.

“‘Sup G-Man,” says Langley. “We just thought we’d call and check in on the transfer situation. You gonna be headed our way anytime soon?”

“Start freshening up the guest room, boys, I’m gonna need somewhere to crash while I apartment hunt down in DC.”

All three men on the screen smile with happiness and satisfaction. “It’ll be great to have you back on the home turf, Mulder.” Says Byers. “Things just haven’t been the same without you.”

Their good mood is contagious, compounding on his own, and Mulder’s glad now that he picked up the call. They continue to talk for a few minutes about various things: the Gunmen’s latest headlines, the NSA’s latest scandal, a recent photo of a creature that’s supposedly Bigfoot that cropped up in Nebraska in the past week. Through the conversation there is the distorted, tinny noise of recorded voices coming from somewhere in the Gunmen’s room. When he picks out the first notes of the Wedding March in the jumbled sound, Mulder speaks up.

“What’s that in the background?” He asks, amused.

Byers rolls his eyes. “Just some new show Frohike’s been bingeing. Something about getting married to a stranger.”

Frohike’s head swivels towards the camera. “Married at First Sight! It’s great. A bunch of scientists pair people up and don’t let them meet each other till they’re at the alter.”

“You’re kidding,” Mulder chuckles. “That actually exists? And you watch it?”

“Hey!” says Frohike, somewhat defensively. “It’s quality entertainment.”

“I’m sure.”

“It is! And besides, it’s not like some of these people are gonna make it to the alter any other way.”

A wicked smile spreads over Mulder’s face. “I’ll sign up, then.”

That leaves all three Gunmen speechless, wearing identical expressions of shock.

“You?” says Byers. “Why would you sign up?”

Mulder shrugs, still grinning. “I’m pretty hopeless myself when it comes to romance. Last eight dates I’ve had have been with online porn and let me tell you, it’s not always a cheap. Besides, I’m moving to a whole new city. It’s the perfect time to make a couple life changes.”

“You don’t wanna do it, Mulder.” Frohike tells him with a shake of his head. “Most of the people on it are kinda weird.”

“Kinda weird?” Mulder scoffs. “Who do you know that’s weirder than me? The guy who’s committing career suicide to open up an FBI division devoted to tracking down extraterrestrial life.”

“You know what I mean,” replies Frohike. “They’re romantic weirdos. Relationship weirdos. Doesn’t seem like your kinda scene.”

There’s a stubborn set in Mulder’s jaw as he shakes his head. “I think I could make it with the weirdest of them. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna sign up.”

The other men are caught between unease and amusement, unsure whether or not to take him seriously. Mulder decides it’s the perfect note on which to end the conversation.

“Well, guys, it’s been great chatting,” he says with a wave. “But apparently I’ve got a show to get myself on.” He clicks the ‘end call’ button, still smirking.

Initially, he just reopens his browser and resumes scrolling through porn. There’s a niggling curiosity, though, a sort of condescending need to know what exactly the show is about, how they’re able to package arranged marriages in a way to make them appeal to the American masses. Opening a new tab, he googles the show and begins to read up.

Once he is informed on the concept, Mulder is genuinely intrigued. As a trained psychologist it would be interesting, if nothing else, to go through the interview process and see what kind of criteria participants had to meet in order to land themselves a spot on the show. Despite the fact that he had been (mostly) joking with the guys, he opens up the application.

Mulder breezes through the questions, answering everything honestly but without much thought. He freezes for a second when he comes to one asking about his childhood and his parent’s marriage, but covers the topic with the word “difficult” and moves on. The whole process takes him around a half an hour.

After hitting submit, Mulder closes the tab and returns to his porn but finds that he’s not really in the mindset for it anymore. Closing his laptop, he strips himself down to his boxers and grabs a blanket before lying back down on the couch. As he begins to drift off he thinks about all of the X-Files that are sitting in DC, waiting to be solved, waiting for him to solve them.

He almost smiles as he falls into a dreamless sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so a quick note: I'm changing around professions/professional tracks a little bit. Scully is gonna start off as a professor/forensic pathology liason with the FBI in DC while Mulder is kicking off the story from the FBI's Boston headquarters. His background is essentially that he started in VCU in DC then transferred up to Boston and is now coming back to open up the X-Files. I know it's all kinda jumbled and out of order and not true to canon, but it works best for the story, so I'm sticking to it.
> 
> A million thanks to Amber (find her on tumblr @milanofalcon) who is the best friend and beta I could ask for.


End file.
